Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard?

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

Exactly. Too little too late as has been said a countless number of times here. =x That's why I have to laugh when the Vanbois start arguing that the game has time and that Sigil will fix this and correct that and add this other thing. Point of the matter is - none of that means dick if you don't have players there to experience the content.

There is only so much people are going to pay a monthly fee for. Its a cycle...regardless of the changes you make you're just going to lose subscribers at this stage in the game, not gain them. I'm not saying that is the way it should be...its unfortunate because EQ2 *is* an incredible game now...its just so lacking in playerbase. I'd hate to see Sigil experience the same thing, but it appears that's what will happen. =/

Actually, Cuppy...the game does have time. A few weeks or so until LOTRO comes out, then it's 'kiss your ass goodbye, Mister McQuaid' and the SOE buyout clock starts up. (I'm betting 6 months)

[Twobit Whore]

Honestly I doubt LOTRO will pull many people away from Vanguard. The most it will do is keep people from trying it that may have. I think a lot of the people who are already planning to play are waiting and not wasting money/time in a game they aren't that interested in in the first place.

Now, WAR and AoC are a different story. Especially AoC if it has good DX10 support and the people running VG at high settings now can actually use those cards to push new graphics features instead of overpowering bloated older features.

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Honestly I doubt LOTRO will pull many people away from Vanguard. The most it will do is keep people from trying it that may have. I think a lot of the people who are already planning to play are waiting and not wasting money/time in a game they aren't that interested in in the first place.

Well I know a more than a few people playing VG that are on the fence. Several are considering LOTRO, and others might end up joining me playing CoX (damn fun games). And of course it's not going to help them bring in new subs either. Anyhow, we'll see soon enough.

[kohl]

Originally Posted by r.gun

We all know that apart from WoW most MMO's get mediocre reviews at best because reviewers don't have the time to invest to see the whole game, or even the better parts of the game at high level.

Is that the same tired shit you will tell John Q. Customer who buys the game? Are you going to pop out like a cartoon character when he loses interest 1 hour into the game and say, with a big smile, "give it time! see the whole game!".

I think we've been over this ground before. Games should be fun from the beginning; they need a hook to keep people playing both initially and for the long term.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Manticore

I doubt that a reviewer who played eve for just a couple of hours can get a solid grip of the "end game" evolved around the 0.0 player politics

Please. The end game will not radically change the review. If it's a shitty game at the start, it's more or less a shitty game at the middle, and the end. Player community/drama is a byproduct of the game, not the game itself.

I love Shadowbane to death with its player community and drama that puts anything on TV, in other MMO's, or RL to shame... but that doesn't change it from being a ~70% game.

[Slick Willey]

Originally Posted by Cantatus

Microsoft is spearheading their "Games for Windows" initiative to try to make PC gaming more attractive. Perhaps one of their goals should be to establish a recommended set of requirements every year that developers try to aim for.

This is precisely one of the things Microsoft is trying to do with "Games for Windows." From what I understand, developers will have to meet certain uniform specifications in order to be labeled a "Games for Windows" title.

[Witoubo]

Originally Posted by cadiz

Had they decided to write the game from scratch using OpenGL instead of DirectX there would be NO hardware scaleability issues. Things would run decently on more-than-adequate hardware.

The reason it crawls on non-NASA hardware isn't because the graphics are phenomenal, the world is bigger, or they are using technology from the future. It is because of a poor, design decision to use EZ mode technology and a drop-in game engine solution and add models to it. Sounds like someone was in a hurry.

Solution: Rewrite the game from scratch, use OpenGL, write or modify an existing OpenGL engine like Q3A/ET/etc. if you do not want to make your own. Wala! No zoning needed, textures loading is sane (why should you load *everything* even stuff you don't see) and its a better, more scaleable game.

Of course this costs a lot more because you write a lot of your own custom toolkits which require your coders to have more than a 1-year degree from an "online game design college."

"but the trees sway"

This is such a terrible, 1st semester computer science student assessment I am having trouble finding words to describe it.

[Fog]

Originally Posted by cadiz

Had they decided to write the game from scratch using OpenGL instead of DirectX there would be NO hardware scaleability issues. Things would run decently on more-than-adequate hardware.

The reason it crawls on non-NASA hardware isn't because the graphics are phenomenal, the world is bigger, or they are using technology from the future. It is because of a poor, design decision to use EZ mode technology and a drop-in game engine solution and add models to it. Sounds like someone was in a hurry.

Solution: Rewrite the game from scratch, use OpenGL, write or modify an existing OpenGL engine like Q3A/ET/etc. if you do not want to make your own. Wala! No zoning needed, textures loading is sane (why should you load *everything* even stuff you don't see) and its a better, more scaleable game.

Of course this costs a lot more because you write a lot of your own custom toolkits which require your coders to have more than a 1-year degree from an "online game design college."

"but the trees sway"

Why is shit like this not moderated off the forums?

[Jedite]

Originally Posted by Witoubo

This is such a terrible, 1st semester computer science student assessment I am having trouble finding words to describe it.

I have to agree. News flash OpenGL is not the saviour. If you look at most games out in todays market, they use Direct X. Dont come and say that but WoW uses OpenGL. You wana know why? 2 simple reasons, 1 its a modified War3 engine which used Opengl, and 2 they wanted to port it to Mac.

If you look at 90% of the games out in the market right now, you will see a nice little lable that says "DirectX 8.0+ requiered". Im not saying OpenGL is dead, its still alive and well but atm OpenGL hasnt been able to keep up with the Advances Microsoft has made with DirectX. Those advancements are directly influenced by the fact that DirectX is part of Xbox and well they need to get there shit as good as they can.


Small edit. Were in the world do you get the idea that it is EZMode to drop in models on an Unreal Engine. Sure its a freaking vast engine with a plethora of tools, but they still had to tweak the shit out of it, For example since Unreal engine was Zone based and Vanguard wanted a seemless world.

Why dont you go get the Torque engine, and try to get a half assed game running and then come and tell me its as easy as just droping some models in and vuala.

The solution to the Graphics problem is not write a new engine. You have an engine you just have to continue to tweak it, change processes, change the rendering sequence, ect ect.

They were trully extremly ambitious on what they wanted to display on the screen, however I still think there is LARGE room to improve the code to increase performance.

[Twobit Whore]

While OpenGL may or may not be the answer, it is pretty much a certainty that the Unreal engine was not designed to do what they are trying to do. It has been tweaked and gutted and twisted so much that they really could have done better by writing their own.

[Jedite]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

While OpenGL may or may not be the answer, it is pretty much a certainty that the Unreal engine was not designed to do what they are trying to do. It has been tweaked and gutted and twisted so much that they really could have done better by writing their own.

Well we can say that now cant we? But back then it appeared to be the right decision. Bulding a Game Engine from the ground up is a fucking long ass process, which would probably have pushed the games budget up even more.

Its easy to second guess now that we see the outcome but back then how could they know really?

Besides on a decent computer you can run the game at decent settings. On a semi High end PC you can go Max Quality like Im doing.

[Aradune Mithara]

Originally Posted by Jedite

Well that P4 processor is ur main problem. Anything starting with P4 is a total and complete piece of junk, sorry to say but it is. Apart from that a few questions.. Onboard Sound? Latest Nvidia Drivers? Did you use Driver Cleaner to remove previous Nividia Drivers?

but really, seriously spend a few bucks and get atleast a new Motherboard/CPU you desperatly need it. That P4 is dragging your system HUGE, besides its a Power hungry/Overheating mofo.

Yeah, if you go p4 I would do a minimum of a 2.8ghz,and preferably a 3.0 aor 3.2. And make sure the motherboard is pci-express.

[Mkopec1]

First of all, I have a 4 yr old computer. P4 3.2 2 gig ram and a 9800 pro. And I run this game perfectly fine. I have a hard time believing this game cannot be ran on a system like mine or bogs. Maybe you set your expectations of your computer too high? I have the settings set on the one next to the lowest settings. Maybe Bog thinks he can plug his 4 yr old comp on high quality and get 50fps??

I really dont understand. My bro has one just like mine (I built them both) but his has an AMD 64 3800 with a 6800GT and he runs fine. I find this totally unbelievalble that you cannot play the game on basically the same system like ours. ITs totally playable, totally scalable to any system within the last 4-5 yrs.

Its a fucking fallacy and shame to spred lies like this.

This game may be buggy as hell, released early, lacking 35+ content, some might not like it, whatever. And all of this is true. But to say that you cannot play this game on a system like Bog pointed out is totally false and a flat out lie. Unless, like I said, he was trying to run this game on the highest settings.

[gremlinz273]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

While OpenGL may or may not be the answer, it is pretty much a certainty that the Unreal engine was not designed to do what they are trying to do. It has been tweaked and gutted and twisted so much that they really could have done better by writing their own.

You think so eh?

All they had to do was hire John Carmack, yep, obviously.

Also, would like to see the changelogs where you are getting this info on just how much of the original Unreal code base was altered.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by gremlinz273

Also, would like to see the changelogs where you are getting this info on just how much of the original Unreal code base was altered.

Just the many dozens of dev posts during beta stating the fact.